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Most of the work-related blogs that I read these days are found on PlanetDB2.com . I must say that Willie Favero's blog entries are quite entertaining... as well as informative. His entry yesterday was about a series of 4 new IBM commercials that were recently launched. Since I rarely watch TV these days, I had Willie give me the URL so I could watch them. They are entertaining! The overall message is that IBM can help other people / companies win at innovation, so "Stop Talking, Start Doing" . The URL that I have is on an internal IBM... [More]

The Version 9 books are slowly arriving, so now is your chance to pick up any Version 8 books that you may want for 50% off the usual price. Here are the details: ************************************************************SPECIAL OFFER - Save 50% on DB2 8 Books************************************************************ BUY any two DB2 8 books from IBM Press and save 50%, plus free ground shipping in the U.S. Make room on your library shelf for these invaluable resources, quantities are limited. DB2 Universal Database V8 for Linux, UNIX, and... [More]

The
top 7 finalists of the DB2Night Show “DB2’s Got Talent” competition
presented today. And guess what we got? Another 7 great presentations
that were both entertaining and informative! The
last round of the competition ended up with 964 votes! Can we top that
in the next round? As a result of the votes, we’ve identified the top 4
and the bottom 3 ⇒ The judges will save 1 from the bottom 3 in this
show. Next week we’ll hear from the Top 5 as determined by your votes. So support these rising stars... listen, vote, and share!... [More]

DB2 10.1 Fundamentals - Exam 610 Start
with this exam. It contains questions for concepts that are common
across all platforms that DB2 runs on. There is a heavy SQL component
to the exam, and most people who use DB2 daily should find this exam
fairly easy. You’ll find it easier as well if you examine the
objectives and use one or more of the listed study materials. Passing
this exam will lead to an IBM Certified Database Associate certificate.
This is an entry level certification for a user of any of the DB2
family of... [More]

It’s all about being social these days! There is much value in interacting
with our customers, partners, competitors, collaborators, and fellow employees
around the world. We can only benefit in all of our objectives by embracing
ideas from the many people in the world that have opinions on what we do. Before I buy anything of value, I first search the internet for customer
feedback and recommendations. I do this for books, movies, electronics, cars,
just about anything I consider buying. Do you do the same thing? If the... [More]

From reading this article Database Vendors Improve XML Handling it is clear that at least the database vendors are thinking about XML! I've been thinking about XML as well. With my job, I try to anticipate learning needs and attempt to have books published in order to help specifically with these needs. Up till now, publishers are reluctant to sign on new XML books as they feel that the market is saturated with good books already, and nothing more is needed. According the publisher, "There must be a gazillion books on XML." One of the best... [More]

I was just informed that the McGraw-Hill book DB2 9 New Features is also available in India. One of the major selling points of this book, besides the fact that it lists all the newest features is it's coverage of XML. There is no other book on the market that has such thorough coverage of XML on DB2 9. Susan

Congratulations to Belal Tassi , Paul Zikopoulos , Aamer Sachedina , and Dwaine Snow for the publication of our latest book: DB2 Viper Strikes Again New Features in DB2 9.5ISBN: 978-0-07-154910-3 The book was custom published by McGraw-Hill, and currently I am the holder of the copies... although I am distributing them across the world to IBM people who may be offering a copy of the book to you. I'm hoping McGraw-Hill is able to distribute some of the copies of the book through the normal channels as well. So, what's the book about? This very... [More]

SearchDataManagement.com and Roger Sanders are continuing their series of sample questions to help prepare people to pass Exam 730: DB2 9 Family Fundamentals. Here is the latest in the series: IBM DB2 9 Fundamentals certification (Exam 730): Sample questions No. 5 and No. 6 Just a reminder that publisher MC Press is the first time publisher of DB2 Certification Study Guides and will have 5 in the series. One book was published earlier this year, three more will publish in the next month, and the fifth one will publish early next year. Here... [More]

I hope that anyone who reads articles on dWorks understands that DB2 runs on multiple platforms. A couple of months ago, I was surprised to find a large number of attendees at a data warehousing conference who still think of DB2 as a database that runs ONLY on the mainframe! Of course DB2 has servers that run on the mainframe, including s/390, z/OS, VM, VSE, and midrange systems such as iseries or OS/400. But it also runs on Linux and UNIX such as AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris. And Windows! (Clients exist for all platforms as well.) Most of the... [More]

I'm not sure how many people from the z/OS platform will read this BLOG, but since this is one of the many products I support in terms of skills, I'll add it here. I still find our z/OS certification program to be a well kept secret, so if you know people who support this platform, do them a favour and tell them about it! To get certified as a Database Administrator for DB2 on z/OS , you must pass two exams: Exam 700 DB2 V8.1 Family Fundamentals, and Exam 702 DB2 V8.1 for z/OS Database Administration. To prepare for Exam 700 , you have a... [More]

Coming in time for the IDUG conference in Philadelphia is the latest DB2 certification guide: DB2 10.1/10.5 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows Database Administration: Certification Study Guide I'm very pleased to congratulate first time authors Mohankumar Saraswatipura , Robert Collins on the great work they did on this book. They worked with the content that was originally created and published by the certification master, Roger Sanders, and updated it to include... [More]

What
great talent we have in the DB2 community! We know the names of many
of the long term contributors to the community, but the health of a
community is in it’s newcomers. I want to give my thanks to Scott
Hayes, IBM Champion and producer of the DB2’s Got Talent competition.
With this competition we can see the health AND the talent of our
community. This
blog entry is a complete summary of this year’s competition. I’ve
listed the titles of each of the presentations and the replay where you
can find that presentation.... [More]

Today
the three judges of the DB2Night Show “DB2’s Got Talent” Competition
presented along with host Scott Hayes. It was fun, and hopefully
informative to the audience. I
presented first and sadly ran out of time! It is much harder than it
looks. My presentation was on the Power of Social media. I gave tips
on how people can promote the work that they do to the DB2 community,
how to listen to what is going on in the community, and how people can
contribute via likes, comments and sharing the content provided by
others.... [More]

Did
you attend The DB2Night Show on Friday? We had the second show in this
year’s DB2’s Got Talent Competition. I was on vacation during the
first show, so IBM Champion Cristian Molaro was kind enough to fill in
as a judge for me. I’ve listened to the replay, so here is my summary
of both the first and second shows in this series. Feb 1 - Show 1 of the DB2’s Got Talent Competition - watch the replay. There
were supposed to be a few other contestants on this show, but they were
no-shows. We were still able to hear from Ember... [More]